At present, a great number of network application systems, have successfully realized a function of publishing advertisement service information, such as voice service systems, Short Message Service (SMS) systems, multimedia message systems, network-based game service systems, email systems, stream media service systems, customized ring service systems, instant message systems, digital TV systems, etc.
For example, a method for playing advertisements using a ring back tone is disclosed in Chinese Patent No. 00800152.9 of which the title is “Method for Playing Advertisements Using a Ring Back Tone”. The method may be described below. An originating switch system, upon receiving a ring back tone returned by a terminating switch system, identifies the ring back tone. If the ring back tone is a user telephone ring, the originating switch system will query a database to determine whether the user corresponding to an originating number has registered as an advertisement member. If the user is an advertisement member, the originating switch system will select an advertisement ring back tone preset from advertisement storage and send the advertisement ring back tone to an originating telephone.
To employ the method for playing advertisements using a ring back tone, both the hardware and software of the switch system have to be updated and a specific database for advertisement ring back tones is also needed to be created, which makes the system much more complicated and increases the difficulty to maintain the system.
Another method is publishing advertisement information through SMS systems or multimedia message systems. The advertisement information is sent to SMS users or multimedia message users who have registered an advertisement service through an SMS centre or multimedia message centre in group transmit mode.
In the above examples, each service application system works independently. For the same user, it is impossible to subscribe a ring back tone advertisement and a short message advertisement through one service flow. Instead, the user has to register in different application service systems respectively, which makes the operation complicated for the user and also leads to a waste of system resources. As a result, communication systems may not manage similar services in application service systems uniformly, and every application service system has to be reconstructed in order to implement advertisement services.
A third example is publishing advertisement information by a network-based game service system. The advertisement information is generally sent to a network-based game user when the network-based game user uses the network-based game system. As the network-based game service system may not share information with other systems, such as an SMS system, a multimedia message system and so on, if an advertiser wants to publish the same text advertisement information through both the network-based game service system and the SMS system or to publish the same picture advertisement information through both the network-based game service system and the multimedia message system, the advertiser has to input the advertisement information into each of the service application systems, which brings a waste of system resources to the service application systems and relatively higher cost of publishing advertisement information to the advertiser.
To sum up, since the information may not be shared among different service application systems and communication systems cannot manage the advertisement service in each of the service application systems uniformly, the conventional methods for publishing advertisement information using networks force the advertisers to input identical advertisement information to different service application systems repeatedly. At the same time, an advertisement service user has to register time after time, which results in complicated operation of services and a waste of system resources.